Senior Correspondent for Fairfax Media

Protesters in the Bay of Bengal near the Kudankulam nuclear power project in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Photo: Reuters

Delhi: India’s nuclear safety regime is “fraught with grave risks”, a parliamentary committee has reported, saying the country’s nuclear regulator was weak, under-resourced and “slow in adopting international benchmarks and good practices in the areas of nuclear and radiation operation”.

The bipartisan Public Accounts Committee tabled a scathing 81-page report in India’s parliament, critical of the decades-long delay in establishing an independent regulator for the nuclear-armed country.

Australia, the holder of the world’s largest uranium reserves, is India’s newest nuclear partner.

After years of refusing to sell uranium to India – at grave offence to the Indian government, which expressed dismay that China was a trusted customer but it was not – Australia under the Gillard government agreed to allow sales.

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The two countries are currently in negotiations over a nuclear safeguards agreement. Australia’s imposes strict conditions on the sale of its uranium, including that it can only be used for peaceful purposes and that the material is tracked more closely than required by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

India is estimated to have between 80 and 100 nuclear weapons, but will not sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, arguing it is discriminatory against new nuclear states, and that it needs its nuclear weapons as a bulwark against nuclear-armed Pakistan.

India’s last nuclear weapons test was in 1998, but its civilian nuclear industry is growing rapidly - the number of operating nuclear plants is expected to grow from 20 to more than 60 over the next decade.

By 2050, India plans for a quarter of its energy to come from nuclear sources.

But the parliamentary committee said India’s Atomic Energy Regulatory Board was not an independent statutory body but rather a subordinate agency of the government.

“The failure to have an autonomous and independent regulator is clearly fraught with grave risks, as brought out poignantly in the report of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission,” the report said. “Although AERB maintains liaison with international nuclear organisations, it has been slow in adopting international benchmarks and good practices in the areas of nuclear and radiation operation.”

The regulator cannot set or enforce rules for radiation and nuclear safety in India, the committee found. In many cases there are no rules.

Despite an order from the government in 1983, the AERB has still not developed an overarching nuclear and radiation safety policy for India.

“The absence of such a policy at macro level can hamper micro-level planning of radiation safety in the country,” the report said.

As a result, India was not prepared for a nuclear emergency, the report found.

“Off-site emergency exercises carried out highlighted inadequate emergency preparedness even for situations where the radiological effects of an emergency origination from nuclear power plants are likely to extend beyond the site and affect the people around.”

The maximum fine the AERB can impose for violations of law is 500 rupees - about $9 - “abysmally low”, according to the committee.

This is not the first time the safety of India’s nuclear industry has been questioned.

The committee’s comments echo those of the government auditor-general, who last year found that 60 per cent of regulatory inspections for operating nuclear power plants in India were either delayed - with some up to 153 days late - or not undertaken at all.

For power plants under construction, the number of regulatory inspections delayed or not undertaken was 66 per cent.

Smaller radiation facilities operate across the country with no licences and no oversight at all.

India’s 20 nuclear power plants have never had a major disaster, though some minor accidents have occurred. And the country remains committed to a nuclear future.

“To meet the rising aspirations of our people, the supply of affordable clean energy will be one of our foremost national challenges,” Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said this year. “Nuclear energy will remain an essential and increasingly important element of our energy mix.”